Study Title: Exploring the Design and Implementation of Voice Assistive Technology (VAT)

Principal Investigator: Yao Du

Department: Speech Language Pathology, Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California

IRB Reference Number: UP-22-00574

Are you a healthcare and/or special education service provider (e.g., speech-language pathologist, special education teacher, occupational therapists, psychologists) who work with individuals with communication or cognitive disorders? Are you a caregiver (e.g., parent, spouse, relative, aide, etc.) who takes care of individuals with communication and cognitive disorders? Do you use voice assisted technology or VAT (e.g., Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant) and would like to share your ideas on how to best use them?

The purpose of this study is to gather experiences from (1) healthcare and special education service providers and (2) caregiver with individuals with cognitive and communication disorderse to inform the design and implementation of voice assisted technology (VAT). You are invited to complete a 15-min online survey so that we can understand your user experience about VAT among as either service providers OR caregivers. You will be compensated for your time if you leave your information to enter a prize drawing for 1 out of 7 gift cards valued at $10 to $50. Your participation is voluntary, and you may stop being in this study at any time. Additionally, researchers will monitor survey responses and screen eligibility for individuals who are able to proceed to complete a paid focus group participation to share your ideas for designing and using VAT. 

Your information will be kept confidential and accessible by the research team approved by the University of Southern California’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Human Subject’s Protections Program (HSPP). Any information that identifies you (such as your name) will be removed from the data or specimens before being shared with others or used in future research studies. If you have questions regarding the study, please contact the University of Southern California Institutional Review Board (IRB) at 323-442-0114 or the principle investigator Dr. Yao Du via yaodu@usc.edu.

You may save a copy of this consent if it has already been provided to you.Thank you for your dedicating your time to participate in this study.